Beck Accused of ‘Holocaust Revisionism’

Glenn Beck in August, during his rally on the Mall. Presumably waving.(Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Glenn Beck’s segment on George Soros two nights ago—in which he alleged that the Jewish financier was a “puppet master” orchestrating a conspiracy to cripple currencies, crash economies, and bring the world under one government—may have seemed a blatant enough articulation of almost parodically classical anti-Semitism to get people in a guff. But apparently Beck does this sort of thing all the time, and the story did not get wide play. (Although new Tablet Magazine columnist Michelle Goldberg did rail against it, calling the program the “Protocols of the Elders of Soros”).

However, yesterday, on his radio show and then his second Soros segment, Beck must have tripped some wires, because prominent folks have come forth with condemnations, and I’d bet more are on the way. On radio, Beck reportedly accused Soros (a Holocaust survivor) of “helping send the Jews to the death camps,” prompting Simon Greer, of Jewish Funds for Justice (who has butted heads with Beck before), to accuse him of “Holocaust revisionism.”

Then, on Fox News, Beck quoted former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad—who famously said, “The Jews rule the world by proxy. They invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong”—as an authority on Soros’s perfidy; he also quoted someone else saying that Soros “sucks the blood from people,” perhaps the most hardy anti-Semitic trope (the German word is Blutsauger, and it was a favorite of Viennese mayor Karl Lueger, Hitler’s idol).

“It takes a cold, cold heart,” Beck also said of Soros, “to have full knowledge that what you are doing, to make a buck, is literally destroying the lives of people.”

“Glenn Beck’s use of the Holocaust to discredit George Soros is beyond repugnant,” said Interfaith Alliance President Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy in a statement I was emailed.

Said Greer,

No one who truly understands “the sensitivity and sacred nature” of the Holocaust [as Beck had said he did in the course of his prior conflict with Greer] would deliberately and grotesquely mischaracterize the experience of a 13 year old Jew in Nazi-occupied Hungary whose father hid him with a non-Jewish family to keep him alive. Many other Jews survived the attempted extermination of the Jewish people by changing their identities and hiding with Righteous Gentiles.

With today’s falsehoods, Beck has engaged in a form of Holocaust revisionism.

WAIT, WHY DO I HAVE TO PAY TO COMMENT?
Tablet is committed to bringing you the best, smartest, most enlightening and entertaining reporting and writing on Jewish life, all free of charge. We take pride in our community of readers, and are thrilled that you choose to engage with us in a way that is both thoughtful and thought-provoking. But the Internet, for all of its wonders, poses challenges to civilized and constructive discussion, allowing vocal—and, often, anonymous—minorities to drag it down with invective (and worse). Starting today, then, we are asking people who'd like to post comments on the site to pay a nominal fee—less a paywall than a gesture of your own commitment to the cause of great conversation. All proceeds go to helping us bring you the ambitious journalism that brought you here in the first place.

I NEED TO BE HEARD! BUT I DONT WANT TO PAY.
Readers can still interact with us free of charge via Facebook, Twitter, and our other social media channels, or write to us at letters@tabletmag.com. Each week, we’ll select the best letters and publish them in a new letters to the editor feature on the Scroll.

We hope this new largely symbolic measure will help us create a more pleasant and cultivated environment for all of our readers, and, as always, we thank you deeply for your support.

Glenn Beck never asserted that Soros is Jewish. His main aim is to expose what Soros really is – A Socialist – who has build with his funds an extensive progressive/socialist network. It is you who made this association to Soros being Jewish and to the Holocaust.
This is not surprising, as the American Jewish Society in general is very liberal, and Democrat. I can understand therefore your defensive attitude.I am a conservative German, have many conservative & liberal Jewish friends, and are fully supportive of Israel and the Jewish cause, as I have been 4 times in Israel between 1970 to 2005.
I am against Anti Semitism and at the same time against Socialism. Hitler was an Socialist too, btw, at least his strategies and their outcomes have been the same, wherever Socialism had full control. Glen Beck is not an Antisemit but a full fledget opponent of Secular Socialism or communism.

Glenn Beck is a demogogic twit who commands the attention of ( unhappily) far too many unthinking, robotic mob-mentality Americans who would not know the Preamble to the U.S Constitution (about which Beck considers himself quite the expert, but for his staffers would probably be as ignorant as are a good many of his listeners) from the opening words of the Declaration of Independence.

He and his co-host (s) sit there, mock and giggle like mischievous schoolboys which, together with his vomitous Christological piety, “Chicken Little” alarmist endorsements of freeze dried disaster food and seeds and his one show recording which is rebroadcast ad nauseum in which he says that those who do not (what amounts to accepting his take on political reality) “should be destroyed”-I mean one could go on about this guy, but I’m nearing the 2000 character limit.

And what’s up with that photo of Beck from months ago in which he’s dressed in what appears tto be a black SS uniform?

If Glen Beck is an anti-semite then Tablet is a pro Arab site. It is so easy to nitpick
individual statements that belie the context and intent of an article. What Beck was claiming
was the anti-capitalist nature of the Soros influence and the enormous range of radical and
likeminded groups that he funds including the Interface Alliance and Media Matters Tablet
mentions. Beck did say the Soros parents were Jewish but that he claimed to be an athiest,
He did not note strongly enough the anti-zionist nature of Soros’s words or that in his vast
“philanthropy”there was no funds going to Jewish causes. A real representative Jewish figure
to be libeled by the left. Ha. Beck’s program had almost nothing to do with jewishness
but focused on what he claims is the political perfidy of the man in his own words.

To Mr. Klaus Schick: You are wrong. Beck did assert that Soros was born (as George Schwarz)in an orthodox Jewish family (I doubt the orthodoxy of the family!). I’m a conservative and against socialism not less than Mr.Beck. Yes, Mr.Beck declared many times his positive attitude toward Israel and I believe him. I’m a Soros foe not less than Glenn
Beck, but with accusing Soros to be a “puppet master” who “sucks the blood from people,” was Mr.Beck entering an aera
which smells of racism and anti-Semitism. Nothing less.

If Beck is labeled a “Demagogic Twit” Than what label do Chris Matthew or Bill Maher deserve? Progressive Saints or Enlighted Socialist?
That Uniform G.Beck is wearing on a Bookcover looks to me more like the resemblance of a Soviet style Uniform.

Let’s keep race out of a ideological discussion. Religion & Ideology is interracial. Those who throw in the Race Card intend to just muddy up the arguments, in order to avoid the issues.
Conservatism is not antisemitic or anti black, it is an important ideological counter force against Liberalism,
making our democratic system more dynamic & vibrant.

If, as Mr. Schick claims, Hitler was a socialist, then obviously Mr. Schick is a Nazi, since he is a self-proclaimed German, and we all know what Germans did during WWII so he might as well be a Nazi.

I often wonder what kind of people take Glenn Beck seriously. obviously, from reading the comments here, it is people with a total lack of knowledge regarding history, people who don’t understand simple principles of logic, and finally people who have blindly follow some demagogue’s rantings. Sounds familiar, no?

Soros was, of course, too young to have been a kapo, a betrayer of his fellow-Jews. But nowadays, excoriating the State of Israel and supporting its enemies, he amounts to a would-be destroyer of the Jewish state and, conceivably, ipso facto, of the Jewish people, who would no longer have a refuge from the many millions who would annihilate them. He would, judging by his comments over the years, not exactly disapprove of another great massacre of Jews. You get the feeling that he wants to be the last one into the next array of gas chambers. Jews are far from perfect … But Soros is just about the worst human being ever born of Jewish parents.

Sorry Klaus, but Beck’s comments are anti-Semitic. And this is not the first time he has denigrated Jews.

I find it interesting how comments here have turned the victim into the perpetrator. The issue here is whether or not Beck’s statements were anti-Semitic; it’s not a forum on Soros. This is the way Nazi Germany managed their population with propaganda. Whatever the topic might be, change it into blaming the Jews. What seems incredible is that Beck uses the very same propaganda against Jews as Nazi Germay did, which, of course, originated in the “Protocols of Zion.” Anyone who blames Jews for mismanaging the economy and for trying to create a “one world government” has reiterated the very same Nazi propaganda. Using terms like “Jews suck the blood from people” is also right out of the “Protocols.”

Jews represent a very tiny percentage of the population (outside Israel). Even in the US, Jews are about 1% of the population. Yet, anti-Semites proffer lies such as, “Jews rule the world by proxy.” Can any group representing 1% of the population control the world? Hell at 1% of the population, Jews could not influence the election of a dog catcher, much less “control the world.” But, Jew-hater continue to use the same sad propaganda.

This is not about Soros. It’s about anti-Semitic comments from a Fox News representative. The only thing astounding about this issue is that Fox allows Beck to continue to dispense bigotry at will. In doing so, Fox has become a platform for the dissemination of prejudice against a protected group. But, I guess everyone believes it is their right to slander Jews, or any other minority.

The real question here is why Beck finds it appropriate to publicly denigrate Jews and how much longer Fox will allow him to express his anti-Semitism. Funny how this group of Jews who can “control the world by proxy” cannot prevent one man from public anti-Semitism.

I am fascinated by those on the Right who characterize George Soros as anti-capitalist, when he is one of the most successful capitalists on the planet. Glenn Beck’s most recent diatribe attributing to Soros malevolent intent to enslave the world in socialism and send the capitalists to the gas chambers is not delusional but part of a carefully orchestrated, transnational effort to demonize anybody who advances the cause of green, sustainable altruistic capitalism, because it cannot peacefully coexist with growth-based, predatory capitalism.

George Soros is against the extreme unequal distribution of wealth and the economic, social, and political instabilities that are the inevitable consequences of unchecked predatory capitalism. He is an altruistic capitalist who supports sustainability, and he puts his money where his values and beliefs are, thereby undermining the predatory capitalist system and the obscene profits it generates for the wealthy elites invested in its ultimately unsustainable concepts, principles and practices.

Herr Beck is merely one vitriolic mouthpiece for Rupert Murdoch’s version of predatory capitalism, urging the American sheep to be fleeced without complaint and threatening slaughter by the enemies of the state, foreign and domestic, if they do. Classic fascist tropes. Of course, Beck and the predatory capitalist system he fronts for are a cancer on the body politic, but the altruistic capitalists have been outmaneuvered at every critical juncture in every forum by the predatory capitalists, because that is what they do best, and they are willing to spend obscenely to protect the system that pays off so well. Where’s the chemotherapy?

What the altruists need now is to use sociopolitical jiu-jitsu, where the greater the ferocity of the Raging Right’s attack, the harder the fall in the polls. This must be a sustained, carefully crafted effort by a 10th degree blackbelt in mass psychology. Mad Men’s Don Draper vs. Glenn Beck’s Mad Man.

Is it possible that Glenn Dreck really does not understand that the Velvet Revolution which he partly attributes to George Soros brought down a Soviet satellite regime in Czechoslovakia?

Klaus, Irving and Donald, can you appreciate the mendacity and hyperbolic condescension of your narrative? Do any of you guys have any evidence that proves George Soros is this enemy of Israel that you accuse him to be? (And please do not hand us the tired old crap that a 2-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is somehow subversive to Israel’s security and legitimacy.)

Glen Dreck. This man is like a Lynchesque clown who bends over exposing his behind to the crowd. He then begins to pull out doody covered rope with which he continues to hang himself. It is remarkable how this man manages to be of interest to so many. Those who adore him and those who do not adore him. Dreck is a messenger to all of us. What this man preaches and its dissemination is a phenomenon. It says a great deal how very low this country has sunk. I think Dreck would not have been out of place in late Thirties Berlin, on the periphery of the National Socialists and some other whacked out group smelling sulphur everywhere…….to far out there to join any Party, yet anchored in his time.

Soros’ ADMISSION on 60 minutes to Steve Croft that what Beck claims about his WW2 experience is true is damning enough, but the cautionary note for us about who and WHAT Soros is is that he also volunteered he had no pangs of conscience about his actions, because if he didn’t do it someone else would have. Beck’s repeated ref’s to Soros’ quote to Newsweeek about he USA being the bar to a just world is also a ref to a fact.

I have no idea if Soros wants a world govt or is plotting to do so, IRRELEVANT. But such a man in possession of a fabulous aptitude for money is inversely justified in his effort to have a nest of organizations acting as the world’s conscience .. since he admits he HAS NONE, and believes the USA to the reason the world cannot achieve JUSTICE?

HELLO?

Beck’s claims are irrelevant, Soros’ words and actions ARE very relevant.

Can we establish a rule that we don’t use the “compare to Nazi” card? It pretty much rules out any real debate. NOBODY compares to Nazis/Hitler?SS, unless they are currently engaged in genocide.
Furthermore, there are thinking people on BOTH sides of this argument. Name-calling, scatalogical references, and slamming don’t convince anyone that you are right, just that your emotions have run away with your gray matter.

epaminondas – None of your examples prove anything. Abe Foxman recounted his own Shoah survival saying, “Look, I spit on Jews when I was six years old. Does that make me an anti-Semite?” Foxman further stated that, ‘The issue of the Shoah “is so sensitive that I’m not even sure Holocaust survivors themselves are willing to make such judgments,” Foxman went on “For a political commentator or entertainer to have the audacity to say, there’s a Jewish boy sending Jews to death camps, that’s horrific. It’s totally off limits and over the top”.’http://www.thejewishweek.com/st/glenn_becks_monstrous_soros_accusations_rile_holocaust_survivors_jewish.html

I have worked on video crews interviewing survivors for Spielberg’s Shoah Project and have been moved by the brutal honesty with which many of these people have approached their own stories and the pain to their consciences. Try walking a mile in those shoes. Or even a block.

Soros founded his Open Society Foundation specifically because his experience has taught him that Jews and other vulnerable cultures and communities are much better off in open societies than under totalitarian regimes. This action alone puts the lie to your characterization of Soros as having no conscience.

Leah – Even the Nazis did not begin with Birkenau. They put their world through the Reischtag and Kristallnacht first. (Aside, as the student of history that he claims to be, do you think Beck appreciated the timing and method of his message smearing George Soros as it coincided with the anniversary of Kristallnacht?)

I don’t watch Beck much..few times when he discussed the Czars surrounding Pres. Obama who were the communists, admittingly, Van Jones and exposed it for us. Good job there since we do not have reporters anymore.

As far as George Soros, he supports socialism or if you want to call it communism but I feel our own Rabbis have let us down. They support the Muslim community out on Long Island, New York who does not cooperate with the police and instead of thanking Cong. Peter King, who is trying to protect us..they went against him.

This country is economically bereft but if you want to go after Beck than go after the Priests and Rabbis who are allowing the democrat party to pass laws that take away our freedom, no different than Soros.

Pres. Obama is seen to dislike jews and Israel and pressuring him. Anyone standing up for Israel who is Jewish in the Senate or the House?

Let us take on the self hating Jews who have made liberalism their religion. No different than when Hitler was on the rise is this Pres. who wants to take over everything.

The liberal want to tell us how to flush, what to eat,where to live, what kind of bulbs we are allowed to use..how different is it when Hitler first started his regime as the liberals are on the rise with the help of the media.

The media is allowing Soros to get away with it but not Beck..anti-semites get away with it but do not have an important name. Dept of Justice is anti-white but nobody goes after them. We had hearings and statements on tv and nothing is being done on the front pages of the NY Times about anti-white Justice Dept who loves our terrorists and no trials for Muslims who planned 9/11.

If Beck can bring all of this out..then he is the only one and so leave him alone and go after our own government. Tablet is starting to sound like the Jewish Weekly that I refused to accept and no different than the Forward.

We, Jews that pay attention have realized that the democrat party is gone. Socialism is their name.

@Dorothy Wachsstock – I prefer conservative media, too. Tablet and the Forward are full of depressing articles about how the Democrats are being outplayed by the Republicans, how the peace process is taking a beating by extremists, how liberals are losing policy debates to conservatives. But when I read the American Spectator or Commentary and listen to Rush and watch FoxNews, the liberals control the media and tax the rich and regulate greedy industries and are about to take over the world!

Americans need to wake up the fact that Beck is simply another opinion pushing charlatan who is a product of mormon cult theology that he mixes with parts of Catholicism and his personal core as a dry alcoholic. And for the record, he is a Mormon and not a Christian. The two are not the same and this makes Glenn Beck one very twisted screwed up moron who sold his soul to the lowest common denominator of personal stupidity. The religion of Islam has more in common with Christianity than the mormon cult.

The truth about Beck is that he a dry mormon alcoholic who never got the counseling required for alcoholics. Because he does not possess a single ounce of journalistic integrity, he is the perfect abortion poster child for Fox Network. Considering the fact that Becks personal views are extreme Marxist Libertarian, his form of patriotism is false and he is a person who has no real substance or depth.

Glenn Beck consistently demonstrates all the unstable behaviors of a dry alcoholic which include grandiosity, judgmentalism, intolerance, impulsivity, ADD, indecisiveness and blindness to truth. In short, Beck, Limbaugh, O Reilly, Hannity, Palin, O Donnell, Coulter and others like them frequently pervert truth, history, facts, religion and the US Constitution when they open their big mouths. Beck is simply part of a national league of pseudo-conservative idiots who make money off of idiots who occupy the lowest levels of society.

Aw, this was a very nice post. In thought I wish to put in writing like this moreover – taking time and precise effort to make a very good article… however what can I say… I procrastinate alot and under no circumstances appear to get one thing done.

Its like you read my mind! You seem to know a lot about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you could do with some pics to drive the message home a little bit, but instead of that, this is wonderful blog. A fantastic read. I’ll certainly be back.

An impressive share, I merely with all this onto a colleague who was performing a little analysis on this. And hubby in fact bought me breakfast since I came across it for him.. smile. So well then, i’ll reword that: Thnx to the treat! But yeah Thnkx for spending time to debate this, I believe strongly about this and love reading more on this topic. If you can, as you grow expertise, might you mind updating your website with increased details? It truly is extremely useful for me. Large thumb up for this blog post!

Name (required)Email (required, will not be published)Website (optional)

Message

2000

Your comment may be no longer than 2,000 characters, approximately 400 words. HTML tags are not permitted, nor are more than two URLs per comment. We reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments.